MALCOLM X:
Well, any form of integration, forced integration, any — any — any effort to force integration upon whites is actually hypocritical. It is a form of hypocrisy involved.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you —if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy. And what America is trying to do is pass laws to force whites to pretend that they want Negroes into their schools or into — in their places of employment.
Well, this is hypocrisy, and this makes a worse relationship between black and white, rather than if — if this could be brought about on a voluntary basis.
So the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that if the — what should happen is the black man himself should learn how to develop himself, in the same sense that the white man has developed himself. Then they can both come together and recognize each other as equals.
ELEANOR FISCHER:
Well, how can the black man develop himself as a separate society?
MALCOLM X:
Well, it's easy. He is — he's separate already. The fact that you have Harlem, the fact that you have the Negro ghetto and the so-called Negro slum, he's already separate. The fact that he's a second class citizen is a political separation. The fact that he's a —the last hired and the first fired, there's an economic separation.
Only in this form of separ — separation the black man is exploited. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that we should be separate, all right, but in this separate state or separate existence, the black man should be given the opportunity and the incentive to do for himself what the white man has done for himself.
If you have an all-white neighborhood you don't call it a segregated neighborhood. But you call an all-black neighborhood a segregated neighborhood. And why? Because the segregated neighborhood is the one that's controlled by the ou - from the outside by others, but a separate neighborhood is a neighborhood that is independent, it's equal, it can do —it can stand on its own two feet, such as the neighborhood. It's an independent, free neighborhood, free community.
They're not trying to force themselves upon anyone, socially or otherwise. But the Negro neighborhood, which is inferior, is begging for a chance to — integrate itself into that which is — is superior, which is not going to happen. It's going to cause trouble.